


Rescue me

by MyFandomCausesHanaji



Series: Soulmates AUs oneshots [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dystopia, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I should’ve tried harder, M/M, POV Uchiha Sasuke, Romance, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, and also I couldn't help myself, coz Naruto is sunshine in human form, coz Sasuke, oh well, some fictional world where it always rains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 10:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19271245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyFandomCausesHanaji/pseuds/MyFandomCausesHanaji
Summary: “Your hair looks like a duck butt.”There it is. Sasuke lets himself be slightly surprised for a moment ― it has been years since the last time he heard someone tell him that. Getting out of school and growing up made people learn to filter dumb childish remarks from their language.`````````````````````````````````````````Soulmates AU prompt:The last words you will hear from your soulmate before they die are written on your arm.(Don’t fret, I promise a happy ending!)





	Rescue me

**Author's Note:**

> I’ll finish “Here comes the sun”, I promise! Eventually... xD
> 
> So much drama here, ma dudes xD This is super cheesy, please forgive me! Also, it's 33 degrees here and I am not even sad, I have no idea where this even came from xD
> 
> But, spoiler alert, there is **happy ending**! So don't be afraid to read! :)
> 
> Unbetaed so probably it's shit xD  
> Enjoy xD

The view outside of the bus window corresponds with how Sasuke feels. Gray buildings, each one is the twin of the other, run past Sasuke’s eyes. The crowds of people, dark clothes, pulled up hoods, lifted up umbrellas, hunched shoulders, hiding from the cold wind and never ending rain that has long stopped being annoying and has become just something inevitable. The figures outside are blurred by the streams of water rolling down the glass of the window. 

It is the same as any other day, and it just adds up to the picture. This world is sad and life is tough, and there is nothing good in it and nothing to look forward to. 

Sasuke leans forward, pressing his forehead to the cool glass and closing his eyes for a moment. The fingers of his right hand reach to tug the left sleeve even lower until only his fingertips are visible. It is a habit already he barely pays attention to. 

The small words that run across his left forearm beneath the shirt are just another confirmation that the universe just wants to watch them all suffer. As if the constant rain and gray sky are not enough, it has to mock them by giving them the concept of soulmates done in the worst way possible.  _ Words your soulmate will say before they die _ , not just it’s not enough to actually identify your soulmate, but only adds to the suffering some poor souls would have to go through in the unlucky scenario they would actually get together with their soulmate by sheer chance only to hear them say those words some day, knowing, that would be the last thing they say. 

And there are plenty of those with no marks on their wrists, knowing that they would either die before their soulmates or would never even meet one.

Sasuke thinks they might actually be the luckiest ones of them all.

People don’t talk about their marks, they hide them and try not to look at them. Most cover them with wristbands or tattoos, but Sasuke’s is as big as it is ridiculous and he has to constantly wear long sleeves, not that it ever gets warm enough here to feel uncomfortable in such clothes. 

He’s heard of some people who consider the marks a blessing instead of what they actually are ― a curse. They form communities, that most see as cults. Groups of delusional people who think knowing the last words their soulmates say could actually do them any good.  _ We can try preventing it, _ they say.  _ We can try saving them, _ they say. 

It is nothing but a delusion. Not to mention there are so few known cases of people actually meeting their soulmates. 

In the end, they all are heartbreaking.

Sasuke was delusional this way once too. He was little and naive, he still had parents and the brother he adored. His life was so much easier and brighter then and in his memories even rain and gray sky felt less depressing. 

He also believed then that he could use this knowledge to change the fate of his soulmate. To try and save them from whatever horrible fate they were destined to. 

_ Your hair looks like a duck butt _ , is the first out of four line of his soulmate mark. He pouted for days when he finally could read well enough to understand the words. He found scissors that day and attempted to cut the hair on the back of his head, but his brother found him, took away the scissors and spent an hour convincing little Sasuke that he was the most beautiful little boy in the world with the most gorgeous hair. 

Sasuke believed him, because he believed everything Itachi was saying and so in the immediacy only children can have, he was making plans of how he would be the hero who would save his soulmate.

He only needed to hear someone say the words of his mark. All of them.

He would hear the first part of it from different people many times after that. Each time he waited to hear the rest of the phrase, but it never came. Building his hopes up one time after another just to be crushed down by the wrong words following the first phrase, and in so many cases they were the words of mocking.

And yet he still had faith and each time the ridiculous comment about his hair would drop from someone’s mouth, he felt excited.

It all changed when his brother returned home with bloodshot eyes, his wrist empty, the soulmate mark disappearing once the words were actually said. 

Their parents were murdered in just a few days, Itachi arrested and Sasuke sent to an orphanage. 

The orphanage was a bunch of new people and he heard them talk about his hair many times.

He tried changing his haircut. He grew it longer once but it made him look too much like his brother. He cut it shorter but it made him look even more ridiculous. Eventually he accepted that his hair were sticking out from the back of his head in unruly strands and learnt to answer the others’ mocking with angry snarls, never waiting for the possible continuation and just making sure he would never be spoken to by this person again.

Eventually, his life is a pretty lonely one. 

Sasuke sighs and turns away from the window, opening his eyes. The view before him startles him for a moment ― there is a guy approximately his age sitting in front of him and watching him with an unreadable expression in his eyes and the smile sunnier than appropriate for such an ugly day and such an ugly life. His hair is bright blond, almost yellow and it is a high contrast to the grayness surrounding them. His eyes are sky blue, the sky, Sasuke has seen only in cartoons.

It is a beautiful color, he thinks.

Sasuke raises his brow in a silent question and he doesn’t even have to pull his angry face on because it is always there.

The guy blinks and smiles even wider.

“Your hair looks like a duck butt,” he says cheerfully. 

There it is. Sasuke lets himself be slightly surprised for a moment ― it has been years since the last time he heard someone tell him that. Getting out of school and growing up made people learn to filter dumb childish remarks from their language. Not that they don’t think that in their heads, as Sasuke is sure. 

A snarky retort is ready on Sasuke’s tongue, when the blond guy tilts his head to the side and squints with out of place delight, like he is protecting his eyes from a nonexistent sunbeams. Something in his smile changes when he adds,

“Ducks are ugly though.” He stands up and pressed the button on one of the bus railings, signaling the driver to stop at the next stop. “Swan butt sounds better, ne?” He laughs lightly, winks at Sasuke who chokes on his breath, and walks to the doors. “Black swans are gorgeous.” 

The bus stops and opens the doors and Sasuke just stares at the guy when he hops down the stairs and vanishes in the crowd. 

He’s read about this. About this feeling of the time stopping. It is probably the strangest feeling he’s ever had. 

He feels a bit delusional and he sucks in a breath through clenched teeth. His right hand finds his left arm, fingers enveloping around it where under the fabrik the exact words that Sasuke just heard from the blond guy are written on his skin. 

He feels boneless somehow, the bus trembles around him slightly when it moves away from the bus stop. 

Sasuke stairs before him and there is a part in him that laughs in that ugly hysterical broken laughter that has no joy in it. As if his life has not been shitty and lonely enough, now he’s got to meet his soulmate only to never see him again. This is just so appropriate, so fitting to all and every way life has already fucked him. 

Maybe he will shave his head. Just to never have a chance to hear that phrase again.

What a joke. He is such a joke. How much more should he lose? How much lonelier can he become?

He believed in something when he was a kid, when his life was so much brighter. When he had people who smiled at him, almost as sunnily as his soulmate smiled at him a minute ago. His life had a purpose, a meaning, a silly goal. Meeting someone, his own certain someone, who he would protect, save.

And then he had no one who could protect him like his parents and brother did. And then he was alone, and all the hopes for this life to bring him something good just vanished.

So pathetic he is.

He pulls his left sleeve up and the skin of his forearm is bare and he can’t help but stare at it for another moment, and the memory rises up in his mind, how his brother was sitting there for hours just looking at his empty wrist where the words used to be.

Sasuke gulps and stands up on shaky legs and he has to clear his voice before shouting to the driver to stop the bus. They are in the middle of the traffic and it takes a few more shouts and a few more slow minutes until the bus finally pulls over.

Sasuke jumps out of it, instantly colliding with some pedestrian walking by. He mumbles half hearted apologies and starts to run back to the bus stop. He realises he has left his umbrella on the bus and the rain instantly soaks his hair, plastering it around his head, water rolling down his face and he has to blink and wipe his eyes. 

Maybe he can just never use an umbrella. His hair will always be wet and heavy and no one will ever say that phrase he hates so much, now even more than before.

He runs past the crowds, through the falling rain, feet splashing the water on the pavement. He is looking above the heads in search for the bright yellow one, and that part of him that had emerged from where his hopeful naive self died all those years ago whispers in his mind, that there is no point, and the guy probably has an umbrella, as black as the ones most people use, and Sasuke will never find him.

Or maybe he is already dead. Road accidents and crazy people with knives in their hands happen all the time here. Or perhaps it is something even more inevitable, a burst vessel in a brain or heart.

Or maybe the guy will live a long and peaceful life and will die in his old age, and Sasuke will just never see him again and will never know.

Sasuke passes the bus stop and stops before the intersection, looking around. The traffic lights take long here and perhaps the guy didn’t get a chance to get far. 

He looks around frantically, not even sure what he is going to do if he actually finds him. One of the lights changes to green and Sasuke is swamped by the sea of people and has little choice but to cross the road along with them.

Sasuke sees him when he is on his halfway to the other side of the street. The guy is hard to miss, that with his insanely bright orange umbrella, and Sasuke is surprised to feel himself chuckling at that. The guy walks out of one of the shops across from where Sasuke is now and heads to the traffic light. 

Sasuke hurries to cross the street and stops at another traffic light. They are now in front of one another, waiting for the light to change, but Sasuke knows the guy doesn’t see him in the sea of dark clothed people. He has never been the one to stand out.

The traffic light changes to green, and Sasuke stands his ground as he sees the blond guy start walking toward him. He will just wait for him here, and then he will figure it out. 

The time is nauseatingly slow, and Sasuke wonders how would he react if the guy just collapses in front of him.

He almost jumps in surprise when he hears the loud honking and all the people on the street turn their heads to the left, where the huge truck is closing in to the intersection on such speed that makes Sasuke think that either the driver is drunk or there is something with the car. The truck honks again and there is no chance it will stop before the traffic light, that if its breaks are even working. 

Sasuke turns his head back sharply and he sees people running away to the safety of the sidewalks, freeing the road. There is only one figure still walking. The guy lifts his head and Sasuke sees the big headphones on his head. 

The guy smiles when he notices Sasuke in the crowd. He raises his hand, waving. There are still at least a dozen steps between them and Sasuke hears people shouting around him and the roar of the truck engine is already so close.

There is a second that it takes Sasuke to react. Just one short second but it feels for him like he is frozen on his spot for much longer than that. People moving and shouting around him, the movement on the side of his vision, the graynes of the world and cold of the neverending rain. And there is this bright spot in front of him, that sunny smile and the blue sky in his eyes, and those ridiculous yellow hair. And it takes Sasuke that one second to realise that if there is something like that in the world, then it is not all that gray and sad after all.

He doesn’t even think about anything else when he surges forward, feeling someone catching him by the back of his shirt and he loses a flicker of the moment to set himself free.

Blue eyes widen in surprise and the guy turns his head looking at the closing in truck. He freezes, and the moments it takes Sasuke to reach him are the longest few seconds he’s ever experienced in his life.

He only has a place of mind to quickly choose between pushing the guy and using his momentum to collide with him in the hope that the force of it will be enough to throw them both out of the truck’s way. 

The guy is still looking at the truck when Sasuke bends down, grabs the guy across the waist and pushed them both forward.

His eyes are tightly closed, there are more shouts around him and the horrible sound of the metal crushing, the truck probably colliding with one of the metal pillars of the traffic lights.

His heart is beating wildly in his chest, blood pulsing in his ears. The guy’s chest under his cheek expands in inhale and Sasuke feels warm hand on his head, tugging at his hair.

He lets himself open his eyes and sits up, letting go of the guy. He turns around inspects his legs ― for a moment there he was afraid they wouldn’t fall far enough to save his legs from being rolled over.

His assumption about the truck is correct ― it is steaming on the bent over traffic light pole, people already taking it in circle, some have their phones at their ears, some taking pictures, nothing really unusual, if he is honest with himself.

“Holy shit!” The shout brings Sasuke’s attention to the guy he saved. He is sitting up, hands running along his body probably checking for injuries. He looks more startled than actually scared, and Sasuke wonders if the guy is just not as bright as his appearance. “Holy shit,” he repeats and turns his blue eyes at Sasuke. “I thought you stayed on the bus!” he says with surprise audible in his voice, and Sasuke fights through the ringing in his ears and clears his throat.

“I did, I…” He starts. Only now he feels the sting of the skin on his elbows where the hard pavement scratched it. He inspects the both, winces and concludes that while the injury is definitely unpleasant, it is nothing really to be concerned about. “I realised I missed my stop so I asked to pull over,” he lies.

“And the driver did? Damn, lucky me! I’d be so dead now if you didn’t save me.” The guy smiles and stands up, offering Sasuke a hand. Sasuke takes it and the guy pulls him to his feet. When he lets go of Sasuke’s hand, Sasuke realises he already misses the warmth. “You are like my knight in shining armor!” The guy says cheerfully and laughs. 

The sound is so out of place in this situation, and Sasuke wonders if there is even a point in being surprised ― clearly this guy is going to be breaking all of Sasuke’s expectations.

Sasuke brushes his hair from his face, registering that his fingers tremble a bit. 

“Ah shit, looks nasty,” the guy comments with a wince, noticing Sasuke’s blooded elbows. 

“It’s fine,” Sasuke mumbles. He still doesn’t feel on his 100%, the situation in whole is too bizaare for him to process it fast enough. 

“Oh wow, you also don’t have the mark! This day gets better and better!” The guy adds suddenly and Sasuke reaches to pull down the sleeve of his left arm, hissing through his teeth when fabrik catches at the injured skin. It makes him feel better somehow in a way. He is too used to hide that part of his body, that when bared it makes him feel too exposed. He muses on the possible answer but the guy just goes on, “I was sitting there telling myself, damn, I hope this hot dude doesn’t have a mark.” He rolls his left sleeve and shows his wrist to Sasuke. It’s empty. “See? No mark either, we're the lucky ones,” he adds and laughs again. 

Sasuke just nods silently, his limbs starting to feel like jello now after he’s used the burst of adrenaline. He walks past the guy, wordlessly grabbing his wrist, and heads to the sidewalk, tugging the guy with him. He doesn’t let go once they are away from the road and just keeps walking, trying to find a place on the street that is quieter and less crowded. 

The guy doesn’t seem to mind, following him, chattering.

“Your hair looks weird now. I mean, it looked weird before, but now it’s weirder. I like it though. Both ways I mean. You are not a homophone, aren’t you? I bet you’re not, you’re too pretty for that. But you should drop that gloomy look, it doesn’t suit you, have you tried smiling? Thank you, by the way, I totally forgot, was so startled, but hey, not every day a handsome stranger saves your life. I’m Naruto, by the way. ”

Sasuke rounds the corner and stops at the side street under the canopy of some shop that seems to be closed now.  

He turns to the guy — Naruto — and he has to take a moment to process everything he just heard. 

“I’m Sasuke,” he says finally and stretches out his hand. Naruto shakes it enthusiastically and his hand lingers in Sasuke’s for a tad longer than it is usually appropriate. 

“Sorry for coming onto you like that, I am actually not that straightforward usually, it’s just there is something about you…” Naruto trails off and shakes his head with a smile. “Nevermind, sorry, I gotta stop babbling. Really, thank you for rescuing me,” he says and then adds, his smile growing wider, “my knight in shining armor.” 

Naruto laughs then happily, and it is the second time Sasuke hears him say that, but only now it all sinks in. He actually did that. His silly idea that he had as a kid now actually became real, and Sasuke’s head reels in realisation.

Lucky, for the first time in his life. 

His soulmate. Alive. Alive because Sasuke was lucky enough to save him. 

His soulmate, who doesn’t even know they are soulmates but still seems to be interested in him. 

His soulmate, with the eyes as blue as the sky should be and the smile warm and sunny. 

_ Thank you for rescuing me _ , he told him. 

_ You have no idea… _

“Thank you,” Sasuke says and quick surprise in Naruto’s eyes gives place to delight when Sasuke’s lips tilt in a smile that he hasn’t let on his face in so long. “Are you free tonight?”

Naruto beams. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm better at angst than happy endings, but hey, at least it's there, I bet you wouldn't have forgiven me if it all went even more downhill with that truck, huh? xD
> 
> Anyways, let me know what you guys think! :)
> 
>  
> 
> ```````````````
> 
> Fics in this series:
> 
> 1\. **RoyEd** \- _Fullmetal Alchemist_ \- You can see shiny fingerprints on the things your soulmate touched with bare fingers (only for a few moments after which they fade).
> 
> 2\. **RoyEd** \- _Fullmetal Alchemist_ \- Identical soulmarks on the same place of soulmates bodies. 
> 
> 3\. **WangXian** \- _Mo Dao Zu Shi_ \- Legend says that if you fold 1000 paper figures you will learn the name of your soulmate. 
> 
> 4\. **SasuNaru** \- _Naruto_ \- The last words you will hear from your soulmate before they die are written on your arm. 
> 
> 5\. **Otayuri** \- _Yuri on ice_ \- The first words you’ll hear your soulmate say are written on your body. 
> 
> 6\. **SouRin** \- _Free!_ \- Everyone is born with a unique number only they and their soulmates have
> 
> 7\. **Shakarian** \- _Mass Effect trilogy_ \- Counter that depicts how many times you pass your soulmate.
> 
> 8\. **OrgaMika** \- _Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans_ \- If you’ve met your soulmate, you’ll feel when they die and after your death you‘ll have an opportunity to relive your lives again from the moment you met.


End file.
